Animation panel: hold shift + select key to extend selection horizontally, vertically or like a rectangle

[hsandt]

Issue

I must select many keyframes for my skeleton bones (to copy them, move them, etc.). One way to do this is to Shift+click to batch select.

However, Shift+click behaves like Ctrl+click and only adds a single key to the selection, instead of batch-adding all keys on the way from the initial selection to the last click, as expected from most interfaces (including Godot itself, e.g. Shift+click selects a range of nodes in the Scene tree).

Godot.4.3.Animation.panel.-.shift+select.doesnt.batch.select.range.webm

Proposal

Make Shift+click mimic and rectangle drag selection, selecting all keys in the bounding box whose corners are the first and the last click.

In particular, when selecting two keys on the same track, select all the keys horizontally, between the start and last time selected.

In particular, when selecting two keys at the same time, select all the keys vertically, along the tracks.

When selecting diagonally, imagine a rectangle dragged from the first to last click.

There are different ways to design behavior when clicking 3+ times in different directions. Some editors (a) keep adding more and more keys (using the minimum bounding box/interval that contains all items clicked so far), while some prefer (b) resetting the selection, ignoring the 2nd click and only taking the last click into account to build a rectangle between the first and last clicked positions. Some also allow (c) Ctrl+Shift+click to draw a new "rectangle" from the position clicked just before the last one. That would be useful to select "islands" of keys, using Ctrl+click to start a separate range, then Ctrl+Shift+click to extend that range.

I personally like (b) which allows us to correct a bad 2nd click, and you could always use Ctrl+Shift+click to force selecting more keys from the position clicked just before the last one.

However, looking at the scene tree, Shift+click keeps extending the selection (clicking down then up will extend selection down, then up), so following (a) by considering the minimum bounding box that contains all the keys clicked so far would make sense.

Godot.4.3.Scene.tree.Shift+click.extends.selection.in.both.directions.webm

Do you think that Shift+click would be intuitive although track keys are sparsely located and not placed on a regular grid as in other item editors?

If so, would you prefer (a) or (b)?

Do you think that (c) might be a nice addition, or overkill?